We used to stupid and illegal things down by the railroad tracks

There was a period of about two years back in the early 80s when my friends and I spent a lot of time on or around the railroad tracks not far from my house.

What was the attraction of "the tracks," as we called them? They were just railroad tracks surrounded by woods.

Well, as I look back on it, there was actually a lot going on there.

For one, there were those woods (which are now gone, by the way). Young boys, for the most part, enjoy being in and around wooded areas. Not sure why, but that's just the way it is in my experience.

Second, there were the railroad light towers that we weren't supposed to climb but did anyway. That was fun.

Third, and probably worst of all, there was the occasional stopped train.

Back in those days, trains had cabooses on them. And more often than not, when there was a stopped and abandoned train, the caboose would be unlocked. So we would go inside.

This was both illegal and stupid. I'm shocked we never got caught.

There wasn't really much to do inside these cabooses, so we would just lay on the beds or sit at the little metal table. We did also occasionally steal flares.

Illegal and stupid.

And we would light those flares just because we could. At that point, we could have been arrested for trespassing AND theft.

There were also these little explosive things with metal tabs that you could put on the rails and, when a train came along and ran over them, they would emit a satisfying boom.

One time (this is a true story), my friend Mike and I were kidnapped at the tracks by two older kids from Eastlake. And when I say "kidnapped," I just mean they wouldn't let us leave because they had been doing something illegal and were afraid we would go and tell the cops about it. I can't even remember what they had been doing.

And besides, we had no intention of snitching on them. We just wanted to go home.

Eventually they let us go, but it did add to the adventure and mystique of the tracks.

Sometimes we would take 1- or 2-mile walks down the tracks just to see what we would find. Within the stacked blocks at the cinder block factory near the Worden Road overpass, for example, there was a little area where a homeless person had clearly been living. There were ketchup packets and other items of detritus (great word) in there.

We probably didn't call him a homeless person, though. I'm sure we referred to him as a "bum" or a "hobo."

There was also a little dirt road that ran alongside the tracks on which a police car could fit. I know this because, several times, a Willowick or Wickliffe police officer would be driving across the tracks on East 305th, look to his right, and see us playing on a light tower or something about 200 yards away.

So he would turn down that dirt road to try and get to us and we would scatter appropriately. Someone would yell "COP!" and we would take off in different directions into the woods. None of us was ever caught, though I do remember some close calls when we didn't notice the oncoming squad car until it was almost too late.

Anyway, the best thing to be said about our time hanging out at the tracks was that none of us was ever seriously hurt by jumping onto a slow passing train or arrested for whatever illegal activities we engaged in.

There are no dumber people in the world than young boys, but man, now that I think about it, we had a great time.

I'm not saying all women are smarter than me, but...

I don't have a lot of "rules to live by," but one that I follow religiously is to always do whatever a woman tells me to do.

This is a corollary to my unwavering belief that the smartest, most organized people in the world are women without children. Seriously, these are the people you want to turn to if you need something done.

Why women without children? Because once a woman has children, she becomes mentally disabled. I say this with no disrespect, but it's true. Mothers -- especially mothers of multiple kids -- are usually shells of their former selves in terms of their mental faculties.

(I have a theory as to why that is, by the way. When a baby forms inside its mother's womb, it obviously needs brain cells, right? There can only be so many brain cells in the world at a given time, and I believe the baby simply takes its brain cells from its mother. Good for the baby, but not so good for the mom, whose IQ drops 15 to 20 points with every child she bears.)

Still, this is all relative. Moms, in my experience, tend to lose their edge over time, but they're still a lot smarter than me, and probably smarter than most fathers in general. But I'll say this for we dads: We may start at a low level, but we pretty much stay there our entire lives. There's not the same dropoff you see with moms.

So, ladies, that guy you live with who consistently leaves a wet towel on the bathroom floor after he showers? Yeah, he probably won't ever stop doing that. BUT...he probably won't get much worse, either. You can take some solace in that.

In any case, whether they have children or not, I take very seriously the advice and/or outright commands I get from women, because most of the time they're right.

If I had any sort of ego, I might be offended when I hear myself say that. But I've been married for almost 20 years and I have five kids. Whatever pride and vanity I had was crushed long ago. Nowadays, I just want to know the right thing to do, and I don't care whether the person guiding me is a man, a woman, or something in between. When I need to be pointed in the right direction, who you are is of no automatic consequence to me.

Thus, I'm going with whomever seems to know what they're doing, and most of the time that's a female.

Not that guys aren't ever right. Some of the smartest people I know are men. But I'm just playing the odds here. I think back to when I was a kid, and I look at the decisions made, say, by me and my friends on one hand, and the girls I knew on the other.

When the girls got together, they would usually do fun, responsible, girl-type things. But my friends? Not so much. We would regularly put ourselves in mortal danger without any real understanding that we were even doing it.

Case in point: The railroad tracks. There was a period of three years or so (say ages 11 through almost 14) when we spent a lot of time hanging out around the tracks. There were at least 47 ways to kill yourself on and around the tracks, from falling off the light towers we always climbed to slipping under the slow-moving trains we used to hop aboard. For all intents and purposes, we were mentally retarded, but we sure had a good time.

The girls didn't do stuff like that. They were too smart. We would come home all muddy and smelly from the tracks (I would often jump into the dirty sewage runoff creeks around the tracks, did I mention that?), and I think my mom would sometimes wonder why God only gave her two daughters.

Anyway, I look back on that now and I realize my decision-making abilities were compromised at an early age, as were those of virtually every guy I know. So just to be on the safe side, I trust the women.

Except when it comes to why so many of them are afraid of tiny, harmless spiders. That part I don't get. But everything else? Yeah, ya gotta side with the estrogen, guys.